Day of Reflection, Sat 7th November


We held a Day of Reflection on Saturday at Howard's, on the theme "Seeing Others with the Eyes of Love".

We began the day with a checking-in council circle, then we listened to a 40 minute guided meditation on cd of the Metta Bhavana, the same one we listened to last month. After that we did an exercise based on a painting of Green Tara that Sheila Hixon gave us from her house. We looked at the painting, and had 3 sessions where we wrote down:

1) What Buddha qualities the image and the symbols/colours etc. suggested to us.

2) What good qualities of Ourself we could see reflected in the painting and symbols.

3) We chose someone we know well, and reflected what qualities of them were reflected in the painting.

We had 4 periods of silent meditation, one between each reflection, and at the start and finish.

After a shared lunch (big feast again!), we did some singing together from the Arabic from a beautiful cd of chants I found last month- half of us chanted "Ya Hayy" (O Life!) slowly, while the others sang the words:

"I walk with beauty all around me, I walk with beauty all around me,
As I walk the beauty way, As I walk the beauty way...."

Once they got it, we stood up, linked arms, and circled around the room together Sufi-style while singing it- it was a good way to start after lunch!

We held another council circle to reflect on the Tara exercise, and then our guest singer arrived...

Cathie (www.purelove.co.uk) is a local singer-songwriter who Howard met at a Buddhist fundraising event, she has the most beautiful voice, somewhere between Joni Mitchell and Eva Cassidy. Her songs are all about love, some of them by Hafiz of Shiraz! She sang to us, holding us all enchanted, for 45 minutes.

We ended with a final council circle. Afterwards, some of us explored elements of Islamic prostration practice together, and then listened to classical music in the evening.

Blessings,

Zang

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